Tripping the Light Fantastic in Tripoli

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Tripping the Light Fantastic in Tripoli

Forget the Eurovision song contest: This year's song-'n'-dance extravaganza is in Tripoli, where maximum leader Muammar Gaddafi is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the coup that brought him to power.

Expect a dictatorial disco inferno, with the streets decked with multicolored lights and placards paying tribute to Libya's "Brother Leader." Writing from Tripoli, the U.K. Telegraph's Damien McElroy describes a lavish meet-and-greet with Gaddafi, who hosted an event to commemorate his adopted daughter Hannah, killed in an American air raid on Tripoli in 1986.

A long pavilion housed scores of presidents and princes, as well as assorted dignitaries. On his arrival he was serenaded by a blonde diva singing an excerpt from Rigoletto. The leader clapped periodically and called forward an attractive Arab singer.

Tribesmen rode horses a pell-mell speed across astro-turf. A grand set formed a backdrop as thousands of young men and women danced a series of routines.

It also looks like the Twitter Legion of Doom is in town: Al-Jazeera reports that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir will all join in the festivities. Sadly, we don't think Kim Jong-il will be there.

The celebration of the coup has become something of a matter of routine for Libyans, although this year's fiesta features a ghoulish special event: a video of the homecoming for Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the former Libyan agent freed by Scotland last month from a life sentence for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.